Headlock
by sundry
Summary: Distant flickering, greener scenery, accidental time travel and a heart in headlock.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Sometimes it feels as if your attention has wandered for just an instant. You are standing outside, and on the edge of the horizon the sun is just beginning to rise. There's just enough light to illuminate the sketch on the scroll you hold unfolded before you, a dramatic break of black angles against dry golden papyrus. There's a shimmer as the tentative heat of the early morning meets the deep cold of the night. The paper drops, rustling like sand in an overturned hourglass, and suddenly you are standing in a room familiar and unfamiliar all at once, standing at the foot of the bed of a young boy who both is and is not you.

He sits up and grins at you even as he rubs his eyes sleepily. He asks if he would like some hot chocolate. You nod and the two of you go into the kitchen. Yugi is generous with the amount of cocoa he spoons into the bottom of your glasses, and his bare feet pad softly against the hard tiles of the kitchen floor as he brings them to the breakfast table where you are sitting. The bright green numbers of the microwave clock glow 3:28, then 3:29, and just as suddenly you are back in your present. The feeling of warmth as you held the mug between your hands fades and you shiver even as the bright desert sun blazes up over the horizon before you.

Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up took quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep. Blood rushes in your head and when you open your eyes you are lying in a park with the wind knocked out of you. You can feel every single blade of grass against the back of your arms and neck. You are exhausted and breathless. Yugi is kneeling beside you, worried, but his face seems far away, like the copy of a copy, faded out. You close your eyes as and even as he reaches for your hand you don't expect to feel his touch.

Sometimes you feel euphoric. Everything has an aura, and it's like looking through a kaleidoscope. You don't know when you'll go or why. You can only wait as the world around you swirls as the universe expands and shifts until all paths overlap and everything settles into the shape it remembers.

The lines _Sometimes it feels as if your attention has wandered for just an instant_, _Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up took quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep_, _Sometimes you feel euphoric_ and the general premise of Atem's time traveling are taken from Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Basically, Atem involuntarily finds himself time traveling to Yugi's present for short periods. I'm writing this without too much editing or even an outline in mind, so be prepared for awkward pacing and questionable set ups and even more general confusion.


	2. Chapter 1

He appears so suddenly and abruptly that it takes a moment for you to focus on him, to realize his outline against the previously empty game shop. When your eyes meet you imagine pieces clicking into alignment and sliding together until there's no line between them and that bright, bright light. Your heart swells, it feels too full, like it's about to burst inside your chest.

You open your mouth but you are silent, as if the words are being swept away in the rushing by of the past years. _How._ _How long. I missed you. I love you. Stay. Please stay._

"Yugi," he says, finally, and you startle just a bit. It's strange to think about someone so much, then suddenly see him. Then, suddenly hear him. Then, suddenly feel him.

His right hand comes to rest on your shoulder, careful and steady, and he gives the slightest squeeze as if to make sure you are solid, as if to assure him that you are the one who won't dissipate into the air. In the low grey dusk light his arm's still this lovely golden color.

"You have grown."

A little under four inches, three in this past year alone. Your shoulders, your eyes are at the same level now. Atem's still slightly taller but if you tilt your heads upwards just a bit, just so—

He notices this. "I didn't just mean taller." He's looking at you with those extraordinary eyes and a smile that settles into the strangest expression around the mouth.

Atem is coming into his inheritance as pharaoh, ancient power kindled and burning inside him like oil inside a lamp. You are standing very close, and his skin's so much warmer than everything else. Atem is realer than real and you feel so happy that you are scared, so scared. He moves his hand to touch the side of your face and then, as suddenly and abruptly as he appeared, he is gone.

It isn't until after the second time you realize the promise behind it, his way of saying _I will return to you_.


	3. Chapter 2

When you are in Egypt, Japanese dries on your tongue, the fluid sounds sublimating under the hot sun. You have problems even thinking of the words. You are concentrating so hard, so hard on the kanji for stay and the character flickers in your mind for the briefest of moments before the earth is swept up by the dust storms that shift the shape of the desert.

It's different this time. Before you didn't even have snatches or pieces of memory and now you have two complete sets, both yours. You wake up each morning knowing what happened the night before, and the night before. There's no reason you should think there's holes in your memory but sometimes events are blurry, images inconsistent. Your mind is divided, separated, but not neatly. You were reading and now, 20 minutes later, your thoughts are not about hieroglyphics. Some of your memories lack precision, but even if you can't remember sights or sounds you remember feelings. In Yugi's time you study terms like split brain, muscle memory—awareness without recognition, a part of you that still knows.

20 minutes ago. The bento lunches Yugi made for lunch—twin boxes of rice, fish, egg, pickled Japanese plum. The smooth, wooden chopsticks he and his grandfather keep for everyday use. You won't be able to think of the word for them, or how to hold them, but at this moment you are comfortable enough to use them without even thinking about it. Yugi is sitting across from you, and what you are thinking about is the curl of his fingers, the curves of his mouth. Your head is starting to hurt, an intense pressure building and pushing against your temples. You're still looking at him—he's worried now, fingers tightening, mouth moving to ask you a question. You recognize this kind of headache by now but you don't want to leave, not yet, so you shut your eyes against it. You don't realized that Yugi's moved closer until he's right in front of you, pressing his forehead to yours. The pressure in your skull is the only thing between you, and words well up on your tongue but now—


End file.
